


it's no good (unless it's real)

by blueshirt



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, M/M, Oblivious Dan, TATINOF, TATINOF US 2016, Tour Bus, friends with benefits (kind of)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 02:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6636787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueshirt/pseuds/blueshirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happens is an accident. </p><p> </p><p>(Or, the one where Dan accidentally starts reverse-dating Phil in the midst of executing a foreign tour, sharing the world's tiniest mattress, and generally failing at Amish table-making.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's no good (unless it's real)

**Author's Note:**

> -Title comes from the song "[Take Care](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5kKenry2kU)" by Beach House which is such a D & P song lbr  
> -I got excited while writing this because I finally had a home-court advantage here but tbh I haven't actually been to every place I wrote about so let's just...generally ignore any geographical inaccuracies here lmao  
> -ALSO I completely forgot about Cornelia when I was writing this and I just remembered now whoops so you can just mentally insert her onto the tour bus with Martyn if you want

 

The first time it happens is an accident.

 

 

They’re standing ankle-deep in a field of grass somewhere between Georgia and Pennsylvania. Overhead, oak trees rustle lazily in the spring breeze, and the air smells of sunshine and soil. Dan strips off his jumper and wipes the sweat out of his eyes, because there’s just something _wrong_ with being this overheated in April.

There’s also something wrong with their tour bus. Namely, one very specific thing: the engine won’t start.

“No luck,” Martyn says with a helpless shrug when he returns from conferring with the driver and the local mechanic. “Everyone on our bus will probably just have to cram onto the other bus with the crew for the time being.”

Laurel, their tour manager, looks like she’s about to have a coronary by the side of the road.

“Someone should probably go talk to Laurel before she hyperventilates,” Dan points out, because if anyone dies on this tour, the embassy paperwork will be a nightmare.

“Congratulations on volunteering yourself for that task,” Phil says cheerfully, elbowing Dan in Laurel’s direction. Dan is a little surprised that Phil is so calm about something this disastrous happening after less than a week on the road—Phil, who carries color-coded itinerary folders with him whenever he travels—but admittedly, it’s a little hard to feel panicked about anything under the azure sky and in the hazy pre-summer heat of…well, of wherever the hell they currently are.

As though sensing their attention on her, Laurel scurries over. She seems to be attempting to type furiously on her phone and wring her hands simultaneously.

“I’m so sorry about this, guys,” she says. She’s young and fresh-faced and incredibly dedicated to her job, which is why he and Phil had liked her so much when they’d been looking for a manager. This is her first year out of uni and her first job, as well, so she regards every tiny thing that goes wrong as a personal reflection of her ability to manage a tour, in spite of their best attempts to convince her otherwise. (It had rained one of the days in Florida that they’d planned to stop by the ocean, and Laurel had apologized about seventeen times, and then Dan had stupidly joked that TATINOF was completely ruined because they couldn’t go to the beach, and her eyes had gotten all watery and he’d felt really bad, so he’d bought her a coffee and they’d bonded over having slightly neurotic personalities.)

Phil pats her on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Laurel. It’s not your fault that the…” He turns to Martyn. “Wait, what’s wrong with the bus, again?”

Martyn shrugs. “I don’t know. The mechanic was saying a lot of things and I was really hot, so I stopped listening after ‘the bus doesn’t work’.”

“Okay,” Laurel says, and it sounds like she might be talking to herself. “So we need to be onstage in Philadelphia in nineteen hours and thirty-seven minutes. Although, if you factor in hair and make-up time, that leaves us only eighteen hours and fifty-two minutes—”

“Laurel,” Phil interjects tactfully. “Maybe we should just pack everything we can carry and start looking up the local bus schedule. There’s got to be buses that run between here and Philadelphia in the next few hours.”

Laurel shakes her head. “I already looked, and there _is_ one that’ll get us to West Virginia, and then we can go to Philadelphia from there, but we’d have to leave behind all of the equipment—the costumes, the props—” Her hands flutter in despair.

“Wait, there’s a state called _West_ Virginia?” Dan interrupts, because he’s devotedly been playing a geography app lately to try and get a better idea of the U.S.’s layout, and this is vital information. (His progress on the game hasn’t exactly been inspiring.) “I thought there was just one regular Virginia. How many Virginias _are_ there, anyway?”

Martyn stifles a smile, but Phil digs his heel into Dan’s toes. “Laurel, do you think you can figure out another way to get us to Philadelphia?”

Laurel hesitates for a few seconds, and then nods firmly. “Yes,” she says, her expression going calm and focused. “Yes, I can do it. I just need a little time.”

“Great,” Phil says.

She nods and marches away determinedly. Phil turns to Dan with his eyebrows raised.

“What?” Dan defends himself. “I just don’t understand why Americans decided to apply directional adjectives to their state names so inconsistently.”

And Phil rolls his eyes, but he shares the last cold water bottle with Dan as they flop onto the grass and wait to see what the fate of their tour will be.

Martyn joins them eventually, and through their combined brainpower and a lot of questionable peeking at the tour map, the three of them manage to guess 46 of the 50 states correctly on Dan’s geography app.

 

 

“Okay,” Laurel says. “It was the best I could do, given the circumstances.”

“Are you kidding me? This is awesome. I don’t know who else could’ve found us a replacement tour bus in rural North Carolina with only an hour’s notice,” Dan enthuses, and he means it.

Laurel looks discomfited. “Yes, thanks, but…well, there’s just one small problem.”

She leads them past the bunks, past the bathroom, and to the very back where the door to the small private bedroom compartment is. She pushes the door open and Dan instantly understands the issue. Their original bus had had two twin cots in the bedroom area that he and Phil had decided to share, but this one—

There’s only one bed. With a full-size mattress.

“Oh,” Dan says. “Well, there’s still the four bunks, right? Phil can have the bed and I’ll take a bunk.” It sounds horrifically uncomfortable—bunks and being taller than 6’ don’t go together—but he can make sacrifices for the greater good.

Phil shakes his head. “We don’t have any extra bunks. There’s Laurel and Martyn, and then Joey and Xander, remember?”

Shit. Dan had forgotten about the two sound guys who’d been doubling up on bunks over on Bus B until Martyn had heard about it and invited them over to Bus A.

“I’m not sharing a bed with Phil,” Martyn says immediately before anyone else can raise the possibility. “Never again,” he vows.

“Okay, that was _one_ time, and I was seven! You can’t blame a seven-year-old for wetting the bed,” Phil says defensively, red flush creeping up his neck.

And Dan would love to jump all over _that_ comment, but Laurel is still waiting for their verdict, her eyes shining with uncertainty.

“Laurel,” he says. “If we load all our stuff on here immediately and get on the road as soon as possible, are we going to make it to Philadelphia on time?”

Laurel nods. “Yes. It’ll be tight, but we’ll definitely make it.”

The alternative is sitting around North Carolina for a week while the mechanic orders a new part and does the labor on their original tour bus, and they don’t have that kind of time to sit around and twiddle their thumbs. (Also, Laurel had excitedly mentioned something about a guided tour of all the notable places that Nicholas Sparks books are set in North Carolina, and there is absolutely no way that Dan is allowing himself to be dragged along on _that._ )

Dan meets Phil’s eyes and Phil gives a tiny nod of agreement.

“Great,” Dan says. “We’ll take the bus.”

 

 

It’s an accident.

Look, it’s not like Dan’s never thought about it before. In seven years of being best friends with someone—after five years of _living_ with the same person; seeing them at all hours of the day; at their happiest, at their most vulnerable, dressed in threadbare pajamas, dressed in a tux, dressed in nothing but a towel—the thought _has_ to have come up at least once or twice. Especially because they’re both perpetually, pathetically single.

(Oh, and there’s also the small fact of the matter that they have millions of fans who very loudly and very vocally see the potential for a romantic relationship between the two of them.)

And, yeah, okay, Dan can admit that he finds Phil attractive. It’s one of the things that had initially drawn him to Phil in the beginning, after all, before there had been a rock-solid foundation and years and years of shared experiences behind their friendship. And beyond appreciating Phil’s overall appearance, he likes the little quirks that make Phil unique; the little things that he has come to know over the years—the familiar jut of Phil’s Adam’s apple, the random white streak at the back of his hair that begins to show when he hasn’t dyed his roots for a while. The mix of blue and green and yellow that make up his eyes; the way that the blue in them becomes more prominent whenever he wears his glasses.

So, sure, Dan’s thought about it before. But the weird thing is, he’s _not_ thinking about it when he leans across the full-size mattress and kisses Phil as the bus quietly sways down a stretch of road somewhere in between Boston and Toronto. He’s not thinking about anything at all, in fact.

It’s been a good day. Amazing, in fact. After nearly two weeks of shows, everything has finally clicked perfectly into place: the crew is running like a well-oiled machine, and Dan has gotten over his initial stage fright well enough to finally relax and enjoy himself on stage. He’s pretty sure Boston has been their best performance to date, and that’s all been compounded by the fact that several very positive reviews had been released earlier that day by reviewers who had attended their shows in New York a few days previously.

Everyone in their little entourage had obviously felt the cheery buzz of energy as well, so they’d all gone down to a little pub overlooking the harbor after the show for a few pints of celebratory beer. Then everyone had stumbled back onto their respective buses and loaded up for an overnight drive to Toronto.

And if Dan happens to be lying a little closer to Phil than normal, well, it’s a tiny bed and the bus is in constantly shifting motion beneath them. And maybe he’s had a bit to drink and maybe he’s tired— _he’s so tired—_ of constantly trying to be aware of his limbs and what percentage of the mattress space he takes up at night.

For the moment, everything is good. He’s comfortable and loose-limbed and tired-happy-content. So when Phil yawns and murmurs a sleepy “goodnight,” Dan leans in and kisses him in response like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

Phil freezes and tenses next to him, and there is a horrible instant when Dan feels like stomach has dropped out of his body and splattered onto the highway beneath them.

“Um,” he says inarticulately. “Oops?”

“Dan,” Phil exhales, slightly ragged, and for all that Dan knows about Phil, he honestly can’t read the tone of Phil’s voice now. But then Phil is kissing him back, lips finding first his jawline and then his mouth, and it’s amazing and it feels—normal; weirdly normal. Easy and _right_ in a way that most first kisses aren’t.

“Damn,” Dan laughs when they temporarily resurface. Phil ducks his head into Dan’s neck and begins pressing a line of open-mouthed kisses against Dan’s throat. “Why haven’t we been doing this for the past seven years, again?”

Phil nips at his neck in response, and Dan gasps involuntarily at the slight scrape of teeth. He wonders if there will be a mark tomorrow; if he’ll have to come up with some ridiculous excuse for why he needs extra make-up on his neck before the show. The thought shouldn’t be exciting, but it is.

“You really want to do this?” Phil says quietly, and there’s a strange sort of tentative disbelief in his eyes when the wandering headlight of a passing car illuminates his face for an instant.

“Yeah,” Dan breathes, shifting so that he is part-way on top of Phil. “I mean, this doesn’t—” Dan temporarily loses the rest of his words when Phil’s hand slips down towards the waistband of his pajama pants. “—doesn’t have to mean anything, right?” He rasps. “It can just be a casual thing.”

Phil stills beneath him for a long moment. “Yeah, sure,” he says finally, his thumb brushing lightly against Dan’s hipbone. “Just a casual thing.”      

               

 

“That,” Louise says when he tells her over the phone, “is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Dan Howell.”

“What? It’s not, like, a _thing,_ ” Dan says, shrugging. “So there were hand jobs—who cares? There are plenty of people who have casual sex with their friends, and it doesn’t have to mean anything.”

Louise snorts. “Yeah, but since when are you and Phil ‘plenty of people’?”

“No, see, it’s the perfect situation—we’re both in the same really high-stress position, job-wise, and we trust each other 100%. Put it all together, and we got to have awesome, worry-free, stress-relieving friend-sex. There’s nobody besides Phil that I would’ve done that with, actually.”

“Daniel,” Louis says. “Do you even listen to the words that leave your mouth?”

“I’m telling you, Louise, it’s completely fine, and it doesn’t change anything. Honestly, it probably will never happen again, and then in fifty years we’ll look back and laugh about the time we got each other off on the back of a bus in Canada.”

“If you can actually look back on this and laugh about it in fifty years, I’ll be the first one there to join you. Wheel me in with my oxygen tank and my wheelchair and we’ll have a banger at the retirement home.”

“Sounds fun,” Dan says. “You’re in charge of the alcohol. Remind me to send out the invites about forty-nine years from now.”

“Seriously, though, you really think this will end well?” She asks, and he can hear the concern in her voice.

“Of course, Louise,” he says, because the lazy hour he’d spent with Phil that night had been the first time in months— _months—_ that he hadn’t been worrying over ticket sales or venue scheduling or making the tour a worthwhile experience for the fans. He’d let the scope of his world narrow to Phil’s fingers in his hair, Phil’s voice murmuring quietly in his ear, Phil’s legs tangled against his own, and for a little while, that had been the only thing that existed. 

“Besides, neither of us have time to make it awkward and catch feelings. There’s too many other things to worry about,” he points out.

“Did you talk about it afterwards at all?” Louise asks.

“Nah, we overslept the next morning and had to roll out of bed and go straight to the venue. And it hasn’t been weird at all.” He doesn’t tell Louise that it had _felt_ weird that morning; both of them jumping out of bed and rushing around the small room to pull on clothes, eyes never quite meeting; neither of them willing to acknowledge why they’d been sleeping without clothes on in the first place. But then they’d been at the venue and sound check had started and one of the set pieces had been damaged in transit, so they’d all had to scramble to duct tape it back together (seriously, whoever had invented that stuff is a _genius;_ at this point the entirety of TATINOF is basically being held together by duct tape and Laurel’s increasingly frayed nerves), and Dan had eventually just…forgotten to avoid Phil’s gaze or feel weird. And then they’d both collapsed into bed that night and been asleep within seconds, no time for giving a second thought to whose limbs were touching whose or who’d kissed who the previous night.

“Okay,” Louise says, but she still sounds dubious. “Hey, what are you going to bring me back as a souvenir?”

Dan is grateful for the change in conversation, and he and Louise spend another half an hour joking about all the expensive things he can buy and sneak back into England for her. That night when he and Phil cram into the bathroom to brush their teeth together, he pretends he can’t still see the faint mark on his neck that Phil’s lips had created just a few days earlier.

 

 

“So,” Laurel says on one of their rare afternoons off. “I’ve got a lead on a new tour bus. One that matches the specs on the original bus almost perfectly. I’m going to go check it out.”

“Oh,” Dan says, pausing a Zelda game on his DS. “Really? I mean—that’s great! But you don’t—I mean, there’s no real rush.”

Both Phil and Laurel look at him very oddly.

“I just mean that you…” Dan scrambles to think of something. He’s not sure why he feels so jarred by the news of Laurel seeking out a new bus. It _would_ be more efficient to have their previous model back, after all. “You shouldn’t waste your day off working,” he says finally.

Laurel shrugs. “I don’t mind. I feel bad that you two have been having to cram into one tiny bed the past few weeks. Besides, there’s not much else to do in Central Indiana.”

“We passed a sign for a place called ‘Historic Greensburg’ a while ago; maybe we could stop there and check it out,” Dan suggests.

Laurel laughs. “Yeah, I already looked that up. It’s only called ‘historic’ because they have a tree growing through the roof of a church. There’s nothing else there.”

“Cool, sounds excellent—when do you want to leave?” Dan asks.

Laurel squints at him. “Uh…sorry, Dan, but I can’t say I’m particularly interested in trees or churches, so I’m going to go look at that bus. Have fun at the tree-church, though. Didn’t know you were into that kind of thing.”

They don’t stop in Greensburg, but they _do_ stay at a hotel in Indianapolis that night, because sometimes it’s good to get off the bus and remember that the outside world exists. It’s kind of weird, actually, to spend the evening in a hotel room that’s bigger than their entire bus. In spite of how tedious and boring living on a bus can be (seriously, he’s come to realize that the United States is like…13% cities and 87% corn—or maybe 10%/90%, even), he’s coming to realize that he _loves_ being on tour. Loves getting to meet fans, loves seeing the quiet backroads of America, loves the adventure of always going somewhere new; of getting perform something that he is proud of in so many different places.

He has a hard time falling asleep that night, and at first he assumes that it is simply because he’s grown accustomed to sleeping on a moving vehicle; that he needs time to gain his land-legs back again. The queen-sized hotel bed feels far too large, but it’s no bigger than his bed back at the London flat, so it shouldn’t feel as weird as it does.

It takes him a solid hour of lying awake and staring up at the ceiling to realize that the bed feels strange because _Phil isn’t in it;_ because Phil is in his own bed across the room. This bed feels strange because Phil’s hair isn’t tickling his arm, because Phil isn’t pressing his freezing toes against Dan’s calf to warm them, because he can’t feel Phil’s even breath against his neck.

 _Fuck._ As the weeks have gone by and they’ve slowly dropped their barriers, he’s gotten used to sleeping with his limbs intertwined Phil’s. He might even be sleeping better for it, all in all. It doesn’t have to mean anything, though, of course. Friends—friends can cuddle platonically.

It’s just…a startling realization, is all.

 

 

Laurel never brings up the subject of her search for a new bus, and Dan makes himself wait two days before he allows himself to ask her.

“No, I passed on the bus, didn’t I tell you?” She says absentmindedly, scrolling through messages on her phone as she speaks.

“That’s too bad,” Dan says casually. Laurel levels him with a look that is far too knowing. “What was wrong with it?”

Laurel shrugs. “Oh, there was nothing _wrong_ with it, really, but the manager at the bus depot told me that it was the same bus Nickelback used for one of their tours.” She shudders. “I couldn’t force you two to sleep somewhere that Chad Kroeger slept.” Her mouth twists up into a sly grin. “Among other reasons.”

Dan refuses to rise to the bait and ask about the other reasons.

“Good call,” he says airily. “I’m pretty sure that’s like, an unwritten rule of touring. You know, ‘don’t mention Macbeth in a theater’; ‘don’t aspire to do anything like Nickelback while on tour’.”

Laurel laughs. “Man, I love this job,” she says. “I didn’t think it would be this interesting when we first set out, honestly.”

He has the strange feeling that she’s laughing _at_ him _,_ so he connects his phone to the aux cord and forces the whole bus to listen to the song ‘Photograph’ by Nickelback four times in a row.

 

 

The second time isn’t an accident.

(Or so Dan _thinks,_ anyway. He can’t quite tell what starts it off, to be honest.)

 

 

“The landlord called me today,” Phil says in a low voice one night as they lie in bed, sides pressed together comfortably. These quiet talks have gradually become part of their routine at the end of each day.

“What’d he say?” Dan murmurs back, picking at a loose thread on their comforter. “That everyone in the building has decided to wait until we get back to simultaneously begin working on home improvement projects that involve drilling?”

Phil snorts. “He wouldn’t give us any warning about that—he’d be the one coordinating the drilling in the first place. No, he wanted to tell me that he faxed all the papers for next year’s lease renewal over to the venue we’ll be at tomorrow.”

“Okay, so we just have to remember that we can’t leave—wait, where are we going right now? I can’t even keep track anymore,” Dan yawns.

“Colorado,” Phil supplies.

“We can’t leave the state of Colorado without signing the lease paperwork and faxing it back. Put a reminder in your phone, yeah?”

Phil is quiet for a long moment.

Dan sighs. “Okay, fine _._ I’ll put a reminder in _my_ phone. But you owe me, remember, because I answered all our business emails for four days straight last week—”

He is forced to swallow the rest of his words when Phil’s mouth is suddenly against his, hungry and hot and oddly desperate. Dan allows his lips to part automatically, responding enthusiastically—because kissing Phil is _great;_ he is _so down_ for all the random pillow-talk kissing—but this...this is nothing like their quiet, heated fumbling from a few weeks ago. This feels like Phil is a drowning man taking his last gasps of air; his hands coming to tangle in Dan’s hair like it is the last thing he will ever feel beneath his fingertips.

“Hey,” Dan mumbles curiously against Phil’s jaw. “You okay?”

“Sorry,” Phil says, drawing back just as abruptly as he’d leaned in. “Sorry, I just want—”

“It’s fine,” Dan says, chasing Phil’s lips with his own and reclaiming them, reveling in the needy little noise that Phil makes when Dan’s fingers slide up to frame his face. “Really, honestly, more than fine—”

Phil doesn’t need any more encouragement beyond that, and he resumes kissing Dan with a single-minded intensity that is both slightly unnerving and incredibly hot. Dan finds the whole thing to be strangely—well, _intimate_ , almost, as though Phil is using his the pressure of his lips and drag of his tongue and the brush of his fingers to catalog every precise sensation involved in kissing Dan so that he can store it away and save it in his memory. And it's _weird,_ because Dan still has no clue why this is happening, but it's hard to think about it clearly when Phil does that thing with his tongue—

And just as quickly as it had started, it's over. Dan starts slipping one hand down towards the hem of Phil's t-shirt, and Phil instantly breaks away before they can even get to the really good stuff.

Phil pushes off the bed, looking disheveled and tense in the moonlight leaking softly through the window. There is some sort of quiet longing in the line of his body, and for a hopeful second Dan thinks he is going to return to the bed to finish what they've started.

But Phil clears his throat. "I forgot that I—I was making a cup of tea. It'll be getting cold."

And then he is gone from their tiny room, leaving Dan to stare up at the ceiling in utter bewilderment. 

 _What the hell **was** that? _ Dan thinks, pressing his fingers over his swollen lips.

He never has the chance to ask Phil, however, because he is sound asleep long before Phil returns from heating his tea (or marathoning the Harry Potter movies or crocheting an afghan or whatever the hell he's doing to avoid entering their shared space). The next morning Phil acts like nothing had ever happened, and Dan is too busy worrying about a new glitch on the tour website to be suspicious of Phil's casual, bright-eyed appearance or the fact that he has procured McDonalds' breakfast for Dan (a gesture he usually reserves for when he wants to butter Dan up before adding copious houseplants to their already-out-of-control collection). 

Phil has left the lease agreement by the hash browns. Dan shrugs and signs his portion of the paperwork, and that's the end of that.

 

 

Dan isn’t sure what makes him randomly sit up and press his face to the window to see where they are at five in the morning, but he’s glad he does, because he’s greeted by the flash of a road sign that reads: _Grand Canyon, 15 miles._

He slips out of bed, tiptoes past the bunks where the others are all still sleeping, and—feeling a little bit like a child on Christmas morning—he makes his way to the front where David, the driver, is sipping a mug of coffee and listening to NPR.

“Will it set us back much if we stop for an hour or two?” Dan asks, pulling on his shoes and grabbing his jacket.

“No,” David says, flipping his turn signal on to make the next highway exit. “So long as we get back on the road by seven, we should be fine.”

“You don’t mind the extra time? I don’t want to cut into your sleeping hours,” Dan says.

David smiles. “I’ve been a bus driver for more than twenty-five years, son, and I’ve been backwards, forwards, and sideways across this country more times than I care to count. But the Grand Canyon is one place I’ll never mind stopping by.”

David parks them by an overlook and promises to rouse the others so they can have the opportunity to see if they want to.

Dan makes his way down the path, putting a little distance between himself and the bus. He finds a large, flat rock and takes a seat. Then he just _looks,_ staggered and awed and kind of emotional at how indescribable the sight truly is.

Phil finds him a few minutes later. He wordlessly squeezes onto the rock next to Dan and hands Dan a chipped green mug full of freshly-brewed coffee.

They don’t speak. Normally, this is the kind of thing that Dan would want to experience with his headphones in his ears, some epic soundtrack blaring in the background to match the magnificence of the view.

But today, he finds himself oddly content to sit in soft stillness next to Phil as the sun creeps overhead, washing the world in quiet oranges and reds. Phil’s arm is warm against his own, and he is _happy—_ really, uncomplicatedly happy.

He barely manages to catch himself before he is reaching automatically to tangle his fingers in Phil’s, the movement almost subconscious. He realizes with a growing sense of horror that he’d been about to lean his head against Phil’s shoulder as well.

 _What the hell, Dan? Where did_ ** _that_** _come from?_ He thinks, awkwardly jerking away from Phil’s side and pushing himself to his feet.

Phil blinks, startled out of his thoughts.

“Sorry,” Dan says. “I forgot that I…left an alarm set on my phone. It’s going to annoy everyone if it starts going off on the bus.”

“Okay,” Phil shrugs. “I’ll come back with you, I guess.”

They both pretend not to notice that Dan flinches when Phil’s arm brushes against his on the walk back to the bus.

 

 

“Sorry,” Phil says quietly. “I’m ruining your birthday.”

The bus hits another rut in the road, and Dan winces sympathetically as Phil’s faces goes an even paler shade of green. Travel sickness has been an ongoing battle for Phil throughout the tour, and for the most part he’s been managing pretty well—he’s figured out all the best places to sit on the bus, and he knows which pills to take if it gets too bad. In the grand scheme of things, the travel sickness has been far less of a problem than either of them had dared to hope.

But there are times where it _is_ bad, and nothing seems to help. Today is one of those days where everything seems to be against Phil: a long drive from Texas to Nevada, rough terrain, and a lot of emails to catch up on.

“It’s not your fault,” Dan chides gently. They’re sitting in Phil’s preferred corner of the bus waiting for the Dramamine to kick in. “Don’t apologize.”

Phil takes several deep, measured breaths before responding. “Shouldn’t have been trying to read those emails, though,” he says, shaking his head dizzily. “That made it much worse. I’ll be fine by the time we get to the hotel, I promise. We can still celebrate.”

Dan chances a glance around the bus. Laurel is sitting up front near David, quietly reviewing the travel itinerary for the week. Joey and Xander had decided to spend the day riding on the crew bus, and Martyn is napping in his bunk with the curtain drawn.

“Come here,” Dan says, scooting a little closer. Phil looks at him for a long moment, clearly trying to debate the implications of Dan’s suggestion. But the nausea must beat out the weirdness of cuddling in broad daylight, because Phil carefully shuffles over, laying down and stretching out so that his head is pillowed on Dan’s lap and his legs are extended against the seat.

Dan’s fingers automatically find Phil’s hair, and Phil lets out a contented little sigh at the contact. Dan can literally _feel_ the tension and misery gradually leaving Phil’s shoulders the longer they stay like this, and as he absentmindedly smooths Phil’s hair, he wonders why it had never occurred to him to try this when Phil’s travel sickness got bad before.

Phil lets out a quiet laugh a few minutes later. “We’re getting old—this is definitely different from how we spent your birthday the last time we were in Vegas.”

Dan thinks back to four years ago—and _Jesus_ , how has it already been four years?—when they’d taken on Vegas for Dan’s 21st. Phil had lost $300 attempting to gamble and Dan had made out with a random guy who'd been wearing leather jeans in the bathroom of the nightclub, and then he’d been so drunk that he’d dropped his camera in the hotel pool and lost all the footage they’d taken of the week. (He hadn’t dropped his slice of pizza in the pool, though, so it hadn’t been a _total_ loss.)

“That was fun,” Dan agrees. “Probably the most exciting trip we’ve ever taken. But if I’m being honest, I think I actually prefer this.”

He’s surprised to find that he actually means it: he can't remember the last time he's felt the need to go out and lose himself in alcohol and the body of an attractive stranger. And somewhere along the way, he's found _himself:_ found what he loves to do; found someone to do it with, and grounded himself in that. A quiet drink with the crew in the hotel bar will be more than enough to celebrate this year.

“I prefer this too,” Phil says simply. “Happy birthday, Dan.”

“Thanks,” Dan says. Phil’s hair is soft beneath his fingertips, and he has the feeling that twenty-five is going to be a good year.

               

 

The third time is different.

 

 

It goes something like this:

It’s raining in Washington state. Dan knows this without even opening his eyes.

It’s a rare luxury, getting to wake up like this—without the harsh blare of an alarm and the disorientation that comes with finding oneself in an entirely different city or state or region every single morning. Without the frantic pulse of _we need to get to sound check ASAP,_ and _don’t forget the USB with the pre-show playlist again, Dan,_ and _hey, maybe shovel down a granola bar if there’s a spare second somewhere_.

This morning, he comes awake gradually; registering everything by degrees, unhurried—the steady tapping of rain against glass, the soothing sway of the bus. A familiar arm draped over his waist; a warm nose pressed loosely against the back of his neck.

The bus hits a jarring bump in the road and the entire world is jolted for an instant. Phil stiffens beside him, his arm going rigid and vicelike around Dan’s waist. Then the moment passes and Dan can feel him sigh and relax even further into the mattress, still soundly asleep.

Dan should get up—they’ll probably be in Seattle soon, and he needs to find Laurel and coordinate how they’re going to spend the day. The Seattle show isn’t until tomorrow, actually, which means that they have a full day to relax and do some leisurely sightseeing—and Laurel, while great at finding the major tourist attractions of each city, _sucks_ at rainy-day alternatives. (It had rained in Ohio, for example, and she’d dragged them to an Amish table-making class, where, for the low, low price of four nerve-wracking hours and $100, Dan had gotten to learn that he probably would have starved to death had he lived in the 19th century and relied on a trade to support himself. Also that nail guns are dangerous. And how _not_ to make a table.)

But the air is chilly and the blankets are warm, and he finds himself drifting for a while, somewhere in between sleep and wakefulness; body weightless, time meaningless.

He must roll over at some point, because when he next opens his eyes, he is almost nose to nose with Phil, who is also quietly blinking awake.

“Morning,” Dan yawns.

“Hi,” Phil says in response, and his jaw is stubbly and his smile the easiest thing in the whole world, and Dan is automatically ducking in for brief kiss, soft and chaste and close-mouthed, because yeah, sure, Phil is cute when he’s waking up, but morning breath is a very real thing. And man, Dan can’t wait until they get back to London and can spend a whole lazy week in bed recreating this exact scene and just—

_Wait._

He mentally replays the sequence of events that had just transpired—the kiss, the throwaway assumption about this happening again in the future, the fact that it’s become _familiar_ for Phil’s arm to be around him in sleep—and he comes to the very startling realization that maybe this ‘casual thing’ isn’t so casual anymore.

It should be a terrifying, stunning revelation, frankly—a friendship-ruining, career-altering revelation, in fact.

But here’s the thing: Dan’s whole life as of late consists of standing on stages and answering question after question for interviews in each city they visit. And maybe he just…doesn’t have any room left over for theatrics.

He watches as Phil stretches languidly, jaw cracking and muscles bunching. Outside, the scenery is painted entirely in shades of forest green and steel gray, the colors of northwestern America. He sucks at table-making, and he is love with Phil Lester.

Overall, the state of the world could be much worse.

                 

               

Martyn pokes his head in the tiny room not ten seconds later.

“Quick, Dan—Laurel wants to take us all on a _Highlights of Twilight_ guided tour because of the rain,” he says urgently. If he notices how close together the two of them are lying, he doesn’t acknowledge it in any way.

Dan groans. “Isn’t _Twilight_ set in rural Washington?” He asks, pushing himself into a sitting position. “And doesn’t it rain in Seattle all the time? Surely we can still see the Space Needle in the rain.”

“Hey!” Laurel says indignantly, popping her head in behind Martyn. “Are you talking shit about my plans?”

“Um…maybe?” Dan says, slightly afraid.

Laurel laughs. “Good. I’m just kidding; we don’t have to go on a _Twilight_ tour. Martyn and I just thought it’d be the fastest way to get you guys up.”

“That’s cold, Martyn,” Dan says. “Laurel, I’d expect, but Martyn—”

Martyn shrugs innocently. “Hey, I’m still in recovery from what you almost did to me with that nail gun in Ohio—”

“Okay, moving on!” Dan says hastily, clapping his hands together. “What’s the plan for the day?”

Laurel shrugs. “Normal tourist-y stuff, I guess. I just think we should do something all as a big group with the crew.” She bites her lip, suddenly looking serious. “We only have a week left together, you know.”

Dan’s eyes automatically fall on the calendar they have tacked next to the doorway. It’s true—they only have three shows after Seattle, and then the North American tour is over. It’s incredible that nearly two months have passed since they first set out.

He turns to say something of that effect to Phil, only to find that Phil is already looking at him, a strange, profound sadness in his expression, so fleeting that Dan thinks he must have imagined it when he blinks and looks again.

He settles for levity, instead. “Well, that’s depressing, Laurel. Keep that mood up and you’ll draw in all the vampires for a hundred-mile radius.”

Laurel picks up one of Dan’s shoes and lobs it at him. It nearly hits Phil, of course, and when Dan retaliates by throwing a pillow, Martyn gets caught in the crossfire.

 _Yeah,_ Dan thinks as he looks at the familiar faces surrounding him. _Yeah, I’m going to miss this._

               

 

“Oh my god, I _knew_ it!” Louise guffaws when he tells her. “You’ve been reverse-dating Phil this entire time!”

Dan thinks about it and decides that it’s kind of true. After all, their relationship started with hand jobs and progressed to an intense make-out session and then a chaste, close-mouthed kiss. Not the typical order that these things tend to follow.

“I know I should be freaking out, Louise,” Dan says. “But I think…I think this could be really good.”

“Wow, Dan. I think you’re officially a mature adult now,” Louise says, and he can hear the smile in her voice. “Are you going to tell him?”

“Yeah,” he says, because it’s a risk—a huge risk—but he can’t imagine life without waking up next to Phil every morning anymore. Because he wants to try shower sex and sex-on-a-bed-that’s-actually-big-enough-for-two-tall-people sex with Phil; wants to spend lazy days in bed learning what makes Phil come undone. Because he wants to hold hands with Phil at Tesco and kiss him awake when he dozes off during anime marathons. “Yeah,” he says again. “I think I’m going to tell him.”

Louise is quiet for a long moment. “This is the real deal, huh?” She says.

“With Phil?” Dan says. He wonders how long he’d known all of this without admitting it to himself. Maybe it had begun years ago when he’d decided to save the original paper with the questions from PINOF 1. Maybe when he’d been ill at uni and Phil had been the first person he’d called to take him to the hospital. Maybe when they’d first moved to London and he’d tried to push Phil away; tried so hard to make them into separate people, and Phil hadn’t budged an inch.

“You know, Louise,” he says. “Somehow, I think it was always going to be the real deal between the two of us.”

 

 

Arizona is _hot._

“Wow, we have _terrible_ luck,” Phil remarks as they stand by the side of the road and watch the tow truck slowly pull back onto the pavement, their rental car disappearing with it down the road.

“At least it wasn’t a bus this time,” Dan shrugs. “And at least there was a hotel nearby.” He irritably pushes sweaty hair off his forehead. “I don’t understand why it always has to be so _hot_ when vehicles break down on us, though.”

“I guess that’s what we get for willingly coming down to Tucson,” Phil sighs.

“‘ _We_ ’ is a somewhat liberal description,” Dan says, but to be fair, he hadn’t put up much of a fight when Phil had announced that he wanted to drive down to see Tucson on their day off and that Dan was coming so he didn’t have to make the three-hour drive alone.

“Come on,” Phil says, nodding towards the hotel. “We should make sure they actually have a room open for the night, or we’ll have a long walk back to Phoenix ahead of us.”

Dan follows Phil into the blessedly-air-conditioned lobby and up to the concierge counter, and he mostly tunes out the conversation.

“—room with two queen beds?” Phil is asking when it occurs to Dan that they don’t have any clothes to change into.

He gets directions to the gift shop down the hall, because he is _not_ going to wear this sweaty t-shirt until they find a way back to Phoenix tomorrow. The next priority is food, and he asks the concierge for a list of restaurants within walking distance.

“Hey,” Phil says in a low voice, one warm hand coming to rest on Dan’s forearm. “You want to just order room service tonight? There’s something that I need to talk to you about before tour ends, and now seems as good a time as any.”

Dan has a feeling that he knows what that “something” refers to, and it suddenly feels as though he is standing back by the side of the road under the blinding desert sun; like all the cool air has been stolen from the room. When he’d imagined telling Phil about his feelings, it had been in a vague, half-formed-idea kind of way. He’d never counted on Phil bringing the situation up first.

“Yeah, sure,” he says, trying not to let the nerves and anticipation and excitement show in his voice. “I guess now is as good a time as any.”

 

 

It’s shaping up to be a lovely evening: the hotel room has a nice little balcony attached, and the air has cooled off considerably since the sun set. After a cool shower, a change of clothes, and a plate full of pasta, Dan feels quite content to sit and lazily sip a glass of wine as car lights flicker by on the street below.               

But he can’t ignore all the remains unsaid between them for very long.

“So,” he says when he can’t handle sitting in silence anymore. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, too. You go first, though.” He wonders, with a barely-repressed shiver of excitement, if they’ll have the opportunity to test out the hotel bed tonight, because _oh my god,_ a stationary, queen-sized bed, _finally_.

(In an ideal world, he wouldn’t be wearing a rhinestone-studded ‘I heart Tucson’ t-shirt in this situation, but it’s not _his_ fault that the gift shop had such a limited selection, and to be fair, Phil has seen him in much worse. Anyway, the point of the evening is kind of that Phil will hopefully see him without anything on at all. Repeatedly, and in several different positions, because the gift shop _did_ have condoms and lube by some miracle.)

He is shaken out of _those_ happy thoughts when Phil exhales heavily, setting his wine glass down with a quiet clink.

“Okay,” Phil says. “I guess I’ve put this off long enough.”

Not the most romantic of overtures, to be honest, but Phil has never been terribly eloquent about his feelings, so Dan is willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“So, I’ve been thinking about the future a lot, lately,” Phil says, and Dan’s heartbeat quickens. “And I’ve decided that I need to make some changes. Well…one major change in particular. I’m almost thirty, you know, and it just seems like it’s time.”

“I agree,” Dan says, looking sideways at Phil through the darkness.

Phil meets his gaze with an odd expression. “Okay. Well, anyway,” Phil says, and he swallows visibly, expression unmistakably nervous.

“It’s okay,” Dan says, scooting a little closer, reaching out to place his hand on top of Phil’s. “Just say it.”

Phil takes a deep breath. “Iwanttomoveout,” he says in one exhale.

“Come again?” Dan says, feeling his eyebrows crawl towards his hairline.

“I didn’t sign the paperwork for our lease renewal,” Phil admits, shaking his head. “I want to move out.”

“Oh,” Dan says. His hand falls away from Phil’s; his fingers suddenly chilled and bereft as he tries to rearrange his thoughts. Okay, so he’d catastrophically misread the situation. But that doesn’t necessarily mean anything: moving out doesn’t have to be a bad thing, after all. They’ve certainly come a long way since they first moved into the London flat, and maybe it’s time for a change.

“You okay? I should’ve told you when we got the paperwork, of course, but we were so busy and I just…never found the right moment,” Phil says.

“I mean, it’s unexpected, but…you know, come to think of it, there’s that neighborhood a few miles south of ours with all those nice flats for sale,” Dan muses aloud, beginning to come around to the idea. “Or maybe we could even think about a house—I know everyone jokes about wanting us to get a dog, but we could start by trying to keep a garden alive for a little while first, you know?”

“Dan,” Phil says, and something in the tone of his voice makes something small and cold take root in Dan’s chest. It suddenly occurs to him to wonder why Phil had specifically requested that their room have two separate beds tonight. “You should definitely buy a house if you want to, but I…I’m moving out. Alone. To live on my own.”

“Oh,” Dan says. “Right.”

                               

 

“Look,” Phil says quietly the next morning, sitting down next to Dan on the airport bus back to Phoenix. They haven’t spoken to each other since the balcony the previous night. Dan had lain awake half the night, staring at the bleach-white wall of their hotel room in frigid silence, determinedly not looking over his shoulder in the direction of Phil’s bed. “I know you’re mad at me for dropping this on you out of the blue, but you have to know that it’s nothing personal. It’s just that…well, I’m almost thirty and I can’t—I can’t do this anymore,” Phil says, motioning between himself and Dan. “I need to get out on my own; figure things out for myself. Please don’t hate me. You’ll always be my best friend, but I just…can’t live like this.” There is a pleading tone in his voice, and he looks like he hadn’t slept all night.

Dan pretends he doesn’t hear. He puts his headphones in and stares fixedly out the window until his traitorous vision stops blurring and his stupid eyelashes stop being wet.

He supposes that it’s his own fault for asking for something casual between them and then being shocked when it actually turned out to be completely casual on Phil’s end.

 

 

“Well, look who decided to show up!” Laurel jokes when they slip backstage through a side door less than an hour before the Meet & Greet is scheduled to begin for the Phoenix show. “MARTYN! Wash off those cat whiskers; you don’t have to be Phil’s understudy anymore,” she shouts down the hallway before turning back to them. “Damn, I was really looking forward to trying out my Dan impression.”

“We’re here; don’t worry,” Phil says with all the emotion and enthusiasm of a poorly-programmed robot.

Laurel looks between the two of them curiously. “You two have a nice little getaway?” She says, raising an eyebrow. “I hear Tucson gets pretty steamy this time of year—”

“Laurel,” Dan says, more sharply than he means to. She’s made dozens of throwaway comments alluding to knowing that something was going on between Dan and Phil before, and he’s always laughed it off or rolled his eyes, but right now he just—can’t.

“Sorry,” she says quickly. “Okay, Phil, you need to check in with Xander about your earpiece so it doesn’t fall out again tonight. Dan—hair and make-up, stat.”

Dan honestly doesn’t know how they make it through the show that night—normally he loves getting to meet fans, but it feels ten times more difficult than usual to smile and pose for pictures during the Meet & Greet. On stage is even worse: he doesn’t catch Phil’s eye in between scene changes; doesn’t stand next to Phil for the final bow.

Phil goes straight to bed when they get back to the bus from the venue. If they didn’t have an overnight drive to California for their last two shows, Dan would seriously consider checking into a hotel for the evening. Instead, he sleeps on the cramped little love seat near the front of the bus. David plays the audiobook version of _The Fellowship of the Ring_ as he drives through the night, and the narrator’s voice is a soothing drone in the background, but Dan still feels cold and lonely.

 

 

Hollywood is insane. The Dolby Theatre is insane. Dan’s _life_ is insane.

One minute he’s eighteen, taking a gap year and trying to figure out how he’s going to manage this whole ‘adulthood’ thing, and the next minute he’s twenty-five and he’s standing backstage, exactly where countless Oscar winners have stood, waiting to go perform in front of thousands.

And then what feels like mere seconds later, he is stepping off the stage and that’s it: the tour is over, and they’ve actually _done_ it. The mess of emotions is confusing: joy, accomplishment, bittersweet nostalgia over the fact that he won’t see these same people on a daily basis anymore.

Sadness over the fact that this is supposed to be one of the biggest nights of their career, and Phil hasn’t looked at him once.  

After he scrubs off his make-up and wanders out of his dressing room, he can’t quite bring himself to head straight to the after-party like everyone else. He passes several crew members in the hallway, and most of them are already well on their way to drunk, passing around beers and a flask. They thump him on the back and promise to save him a fifth of vodka at the party, and he is warmed by their friendship, but he just—doesn’t want to be around people right now.

Instead, his feet lead him right back to the stage. He must have taken a while to change and wash his face, because only one janitor remains, quietly sweeping in the far back of the theater. The house lights are off, and only one spotlight remains lit, focused directly on center stage.

The echo of his footsteps seems impossibly loud as he crosses the stage and takes a seat at the edge, allowing his feet to dangle over the side.

_What next?_

His silent question seems to resound throughout the empty theater.

This entire tour, he’d been looking forward to returning to London and relaxing back into normal life and refocusing on his videos and just…enjoying being home again. But the London flat isn’t _home;_ not without Phil there.                

_What next?_

The question is like a mantra, thumping through his brain; demanding an answer that he can’t give. Because he’d always assumed right up until this point that no matter what happened next, Phil would at least be by his side through it all.

 

 

“Hey,” Laurel says quietly, some undetermined amount of time later. “Mind if I sit with you?”

“Sure,” Dan shrugs numbly.

“Here. I brought you this,” Laurel says, handing him a hot mug of tea and plopping down next to him on the stage.

Dan gratefully accepts the tea. “Remind me to write you a really good reference,” he says.

Laurel leans her head against his shoulder, and they stare out at the empty theater together. “I’m sorry it has to end like this, for the record,” she says after a minute.

Dan’s voice sticks in his throat for a second, and he stares fixedly down at his tea to distract himself. It doesn’t help, however, when he sees that the mug she has brought him is a familiar one; the chipped, green one that he’d bought at a flea market in Manchester nearly five years ago.

He looks at the mug; tries to envision Phil packing it away to stow in the kitchen cupboard of a new flat. It’s _Dan’s_ mug, technically—he’d been the one to buy it all those years ago. But it belongs to Phil, really. Phil should have it in his new flat, because Phil had been the one who’d dropped it on the stairs and chipped it two summers ago. Because Phil is the one who drinks his morning coffee out of it nowadays. Because Phil is the one who’d carefully wrapped that mug in tissue paper and brought it with them on tour; a little bit of home in dingy hotel rooms and cramped dressing rooms spread out across an entire continent.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m sorry that it's ending this way too.”

“Phil told me everything,” she says softly. “I hope you don’t mind. But he needed someone to vent to, and I was there.”

This doesn’t really surprise Dan—Laurel’s preferred spot to sit and work on the bus is right next to Phil’s favorite anti-nausea seat. He’s often seen the two of them chatting in quiet tones together.

“It’s okay,” Dan shrugs. “So you know how much the situation sucks, then, huh?”

Laurel winces. “Yeah, it’s not great. Look, it’s really not my place to say anything, but…don’t you think you should just…go easy on Phil? Let him move out like he wants? It’s been hard for him to see how upset you are about this whole moving-out thing.”

Dan recoils sharply, so that Laurel is no longer leaning against him. “It's been hard on _him_? For fuck’s sake, Laurel. Don’t you think I’m trying to go easy on Phil? It’s not like I _want_ him to move out, but I don’t want him to miserable and stuck living with me, either.”

Laurel’s expression softens in apology. “Sorry,” she says. “You have a right to be upset by the situation too. It’s just that…he’s trying his best to get over you, Dan. And it hasn’t been easy for him.”

An abrupt, jagged silence falls between them for several seconds. “Phil is… _Phil_ is trying to get over _me?_ Laurel,” Dan gapes, several facts jarring into place all at once. “ _Laurel._ Where’s Phil? I need to talk to him.”

Laurel’s eyes widen. “He’s…er…well, he didn’t want me to tell you until tomorrow.”

“This is really, really important, Laurel,” Dan says, and something in his eyes must convince her that he means it with every fiber of his being, because he can see her resolve waver.

“He left right after the show,” she admits. “Went straight to the airport. His flight left—” she checks her watch and winces, “—seven minutes ago. He’s flying back to London tonight.”

“To pack up and move out before I get back there,” Dan fills in. “Right. Okay. Right. Laurel, how are you at finding last-minute flights?”

“Honestly, you owe me more than a good reference at this point. I’m going to need you to show up at all my future job interviews and perform some spoken word poetry about how incredible I am,” Laurel says, but she’s grinning and already typing furiously on her phone, and he has the feeling for the first time since Arizona that everything might actually be okay after all.

 

 

Phil has always been a slow packer.

When Dan gets ready for a trip, he likes to pack straight away; likes to get everything in order before he can truly appreciate having the opportunity to travel somewhere. Phil, on the other hand, throws his suitcase down by his bed and then leaves it until the night before he has to leave, inevitably scrambling around frantically in the morning and muttering under his breath and printing off itineraries.

Dan is glad, for once, that this is something that hasn’t changed over the years. When he arrives in London, it is raining softly and evening has just fallen. Thanks to the fifteen hours spent flying from LA to New York and then New York to London and a eight-hour time change, nothing feels quite real as he exits the cab and climbs the stairs to the flat.

When he pushes the front door open, he is hit with the familiar scent of the same laundry detergent that they’ve used for years, combined with a hint of dust and slightly stale air. The sense of surreal-ness continues as he slowly walks up and into the lounge, where Phil is sitting on the couch and drinking a cup of tea. The window has been cracked open approximately ten centimeters; Phil’s preferred amount of air flow from an open window. The rain patters softly outside, and a Fireside Treats candle is flickering on the end table by the couch. It could be a scene out of any other day that they’ve lived in this flat, were it not for the empty moving box at Phil’s feet.

It takes Phil a minute to see Dan standing there, and he jolts uncomfortably to his feet when he _does_ notice and it’s—it’s all wrong; it’s just so _wrong_ for the two of them to be awkward and uncertain around each other. And it hits Dan all of a sudden how much he’s _missed_ Phil these past few days that they haven’t been talking; how this thing between them has become such a part of his life that he doesn’t quite know what to do without it.

“Dan, what are you _doing_ here?” Phil says, his face cycling through a million different emotions before settling somewhere in between disbelief and slight fear and maybe, _maybe_ a little bit of hope.

“Here,” Dan says, pulling the chipped green mug out of his bag and thrusting it in Phil’s direction. “You forgot this mug. I know I'm the one who bought it, but—you should have it. It’s yours, really.”

“Oh,” Phil says. He takes the mug. “Thanks, I guess. I was just about to start packing.” He motions to the box at his feet, and then at the bookshelf. Silence drapes itself over them like a heavy velvet curtain.

“Was that—” Phil clears his throat, bending down and slowly placing the mug inside. The sight of it inside the cardboard box makes Dan angry for some reason. “Was that all you came here for, then?”

Dan blinks, distracted from his careful inventory of the bookshelf’s contents. For the moment, everything is still in its rightful place.

“No,” he says.

“No?” Phil echoes tentatively.

“Don’t move out,” Dan blurts. “Just—don’t do it.”

Phil sucks in a sharp breath. “Trust me, Dan. It’s for the best if I leave.”

“You’re in love with me,” Dan states.

Phil’s face goes entirely devoid of color, but he doesn’t deny it, and Dan wonders how the hell he had never managed to _see_ this before. “You knew?” Phil whispers. “This whole time?”

Dan shakes his head. “Laurel just told me. I had no clue.”

“Yeah, well.” Phil lets out a bitter laugh. It doesn’t suit him. “Now you know why I need to move out.”

“Don’t go,” Dan repeats fervently, shaking his head.

“Dan, I can’t just _—_ look, you have no idea how much I want our friendship to stay the same, but I can’t change the way I feel—”

“I don’t want you to change, Phil,” Dan says quietly. “Because I feel the exact same way as you do.”

Phil stiffens. “You don’t know what you’re saying,” he says, shaking his head in denial. “You want something casual; you _said_ that—”

“Here’s the thing, though: I _thought_ I wanted something casual,” Dan says honestly. “But I was wrong. There’s nothing casual about this anymore. I mean, _look_ at us.” He motions between the two of them. “There’s nothing casual about me taking a middle-of-the-night flight from LA to London just to be here.” He takes a step closer to Phil. “And yet, here I am.”

Phil’s eyes are disbelieving on Dan’s face. “You can’t seriously mean—”

Another step forward, and the only thing separating them is the moving box between their feet.

“Phil,” Dan says seriously, studying the gentle shadows that the candle casts against Phil’s features. “I want to do this again. For real, this time.”

There is a terrifying instant where he thinks Phil is going to shove him away and leave, this time for good—always walking away from Dan from here on out; nothing the same between them after this mess—but no, Phil is leaning in, closer, closer, kicking the box out of the way, and then his lips are against Dan’s, hungry and perfect, and it’s funny that he had to leave this place behind for two months to see what was right in front of him this entire time, but Phil’s fingers in his hair are _home,_ and Phil's mouth against his is _right,_ and there's no need to worry about any of that. 

He feels Phil start laughing against his mouth.

"Sorry," Phil says, still laughing. "I was just thinking—this is the exact plot of the ending of _The Parent Trap._ You're right; the dramatic transatlantic flight thing is an underrated romantic gesture."

Dan rolls his eyes. "You love it, though, be honest."

Phil stops laughing. "You're right. I'm definitely not complaining," he says honestly. "So...this is kind of a big deal," he continues thoughtfully, vaguely motioning in between the two of them. "You think we're ready?"

 Dan shrugs. “You’ve fallen off of stages in front of thousands of people. Multiple times, actually. And I’ve apparently been living the plot of a Lindsey Lohan movie. I think the worst is already behind us.”

 

 

The fourth time definitely isn’t an accident.

No, it is gloriously, enthusiastically, mutually intentional—repeatedly and in several different positions; finally, _finally_ complete with a stationary queen-sized bed.

Dan doesn't have his rhinestone-studded t-shirt, but there is a chipped green mug on the nightstand next to Phil's bed and a discarded moving box in the lounge, and that's enough.

 

 


End file.
